Well, you can talk to me. Literally the first time I heard any noise about it was yesterday and it's been there for 6+ months.

So it's a normal example of someone breaking your mod. Whether its been there for 6 months or 2 days, it's awful now for whatever reason starting 1 day ago at build 325. Please fix it, get rid of it, or make it an option.

@rantology the main problem with the current hmgs is that aliens have no strategic options.
As @xtal said, with a little bit of support they are at par with exos, but exos are slow moving and cannot he beaconed.
If hmgs were the latest tech that marines can have would help, but you also removed the extra research time.
This buff was a terrible change, please consider the arguments made and fix it asap.

MGs seem fine. Just reduce GL player damage or how easy it is to hit players.

Also fix the bilebomb visual. It's another terrible feature added without an option in the menu. It obscures vision of the marines to the point you can't see them peripherally unless they're parasited. Dumb.

has anyone else noticed massive performance improvement? game is like butter now, just fkn delicious m8s

Yuuuup. That's the change from Matso that fixed input handling. If your framerate was low, mouse movements would sometimes be dropped due to a bug in the underlying library.

My framerates are >100 and I've felt that inputs are less laggy and closer to other first person shooters.

Yea it wasn't an issue that _just_ affected lower framerates, but rather it became more and more noticeable as framerate decreased. I noticed it many times, and I usually hold > 90 fps. Definitely a welcome fix. Be sure to thank @matso for his hard work tracking this down.

NS2 was impossible to play without at least 120hz display due to input lag

You can name my first born if you want

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to play Natural Selection 2. The gameplay is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of military strategy and advanced mathematics you won't even win a single game. Theres also the game's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into the game. The maps and artwork draw heavily from Riddley Scott's Alien franchise, for instance. The players understand this stuff, they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depth of the game, to realise that it's not just great, that it also says something about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Natural Selection 2 truly ARE idiots. of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in the Marines' existential catchphrase "how do I get to be so good", which itself is a cryptic reference to the high degree of intelligence required to play the game as intended. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion when spectating a game. What fools... how I pity them.
And, yes, by the way, i DO have a Fade tatoo. And no, you cannot see it. it's for the ladies' eyes only, and even then they have to demonstrate that they are within 50 hive skill points of my own (preferable lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid.

So far Im digging most everything these recent updates have brought us. Good work!

Was the fades natural energy regen and metabolize energy regen nerfed? I swear I am constantly running out of energy wayyyy more than previously before the last 1 or 2 major updates.

I am not sure if someone brought it to anyones attention but I noticed there has been a server side issue recently that is making whole servers lag and stutter uncontrollably. It does not seem to be localized with single servers but most of the servers that I play on like DMD, IBIS, TA and so on.

Still waiting for any kind of buff for fades - the latest hmg buffs make it even more punishing for them. The issue started when the bhop momentum 'bug' (b298 change) was removed, limiting vertical momentum. Since then, Fades sit on 40-50% energy going into an engagement, assuming that they are traveling at speed from another room or hive. It's difficult enough as a vet - can't imagine what it's like for rookie fades.

Also - adren is not the answer - it's actually quite useless in it's current state. I used to fade with adren pre 298 and was able to play a different movement style - that was when cele was still picked 90% of time. Now I have to pick cele to get any kind of momentum going and carry that momentum into an engagement.

Proper movement is core to aliens being able to deal with mid-late game marines tech / passive upgrades effectively. Please consider reverting the 298 change or at the very least increase fade's max energy pool or increase energy recovered via metab or rest or buff adren.

Still waiting for any kind of buff for fades - the latest hmg buffs make it even more punishing for them. The issue started when the bhop momentum 'bug' (b298 change) was removed, limiting vertical momentum. Since then, Fades sit on 40-50% energy going into an engagement, assuming that they are traveling at speed from another room or hive. It's difficult enough as a vet - can't imagine what it's like for rookie fades.

Also - adren is not the answer - it's actually quite useless in it's current state. I used to fade with adren pre 298 and was able to play a different movement style - that was when cele was still picked 90% of time. Now I have to pick cele to get any kind of momentum going and carry that momentum into an engagement.

Proper movement is core to aliens being able to deal with mid-late game marines tech / passive upgrades effectively. Please consider reverting the 298 change or at the very least increase fade's max energy pool or increase energy recovered via metab or rest or buff adren.

Still waiting for any kind of buff for fades - the latest hmg buffs make it even more punishing for them. The issue started when the bhop momentum 'bug' (b298 change) was removed, limiting vertical momentum. Since then, Fades sit on 40-50% energy going into an engagement, assuming that they are traveling at speed from another room or hive. It's difficult enough as a vet - can't imagine what it's like for rookie fades.

Also - adren is not the answer - it's actually quite useless in it's current state. I used to fade with adren pre 298 and was able to play a different movement style - that was when cele was still picked 90% of time. Now I have to pick cele to get any kind of momentum going and carry that momentum into an engagement.

Proper movement is core to aliens being able to deal with mid-late game marines tech / passive upgrades effectively. Please consider reverting the 298 change or at the very least increase fade's max energy pool or increase energy recovered via metab or rest or buff adren.

I disagree especially since MGs were nerfed recently I believe. Even before the vertical momentum fix, aggressive fades were always prone to low energy even while spamming metab due to how fast they want to get across the map and engage marines. The downwards vertical momentum boost was mainly a crutch for engaging from high heights in large rooms like hub on tram. I abused it a lot while hardly receiving damage, which was fun, but being on the receiving end certainly wasn't unless I got a meatshot with a shotty. You can absolutely still blink up in large rooms like this in order to throw off aim although downward picks aren't quite as fast or safe. Good riddance imo.

I think fade movement is in a good place right now by placing more importance on map intel. Now you rely more on teammates calling out marines or skulks parasiting (more preferable ofc). In terms of energy, yes, you have to conserve more before engaging if you're already low. But this takes like a few seconds with metab--not a big deal. Adrenaline is certainly useless compared to celerity, but it's on the CDT roadmap. I actually always preferred celerity over any past iteration of adrenaline since increased movement speed is a trump card for securing kills, especially against crackshot marines.

I disagree especially since MGs were nerfed recently I believe. Even before the vertical momentum fix, aggressive fades were always prone to low energy even while spamming metab due to how fast they want to get across the map and engage marines.

Subjectively, I have to say this wasn't a problem for many previously. Better fades would use their bhop with vertical momentum to efficiently get around quickly and have more energy than they would in the current build, meaning more energy to use during an engagement.

The downwards vertical momentum boost was mainly a crutch for engaging from high heights in large rooms like hub on tram. I abused it a lot while hardly receiving damage, which was fun, but being on the receiving end certainly wasn't unless I got a meatshot with a shotty. You can absolutely still blink up in large rooms like this in order to throw off aim although downward picks aren't quite as fast or safe. Good riddance imo.

Have to disagree with you here. Using vertical space for attacking as a fade shouldn't be discouraged just because some players may struggle with moving their mice vertically as opposed to horizontally. The movement style was always risky for fade players due to high energy expenditure, but that's why adrenaline with it actually used to work and fades could still gain a decent level of speed from the momentum boost. The vertical movement was also still easily countered with the SG so it wasn't nor should it be considered OP. The tradeoffs in place were significant enough.

I think fade movement is in a good place right now by placing more importance on map intel. Now you rely more on teammates calling out marines or skulks parasiting (more preferable ofc). In terms of energy, yes, you have to conserve more before engaging if you're already low. But this takes like a few seconds with metab--not a big deal.

Map intel isn't going to help you when you're getting back to an engagement zone from a hive room or across the map and arriving on 40-50% energy. Sure you can stop and use metab, but in those 5-10 seconds you might be regaining your energy marines might have gained critical positioning in a room, or they may have picked off a team mate, increasing the difficulty of the engagement. Then there's the current iteration of jps - quite challenging for any decent fade let alone rookie fades to get more than 3 swipes on an a2/a3 jp without running low on or out of energy and having to leave the room.

The current build forces fades to play in a more reactive way which is very limiting - there's less opportunity to explore one's own style of movement/engagement. I can only speak for myself and other local players, but movement wise it's just not as interesting to play now as it was before, and it feels a lot more risky to fade when I could easily just go skulk with leap and have similar movement with the added bonus of doing regular dmg to structures and saving for onos.

going to go with mr. bone-aaaj on this one, i spent quite a few months working to get myself to the level of a mediocre fade, even playing the occasional round as a decent fade, mastering movement skills and energy management, but now i'm an absolute embarrassment once again

and let's not mention how quickly HMGs rip through you now, it's ludicrous

HMGs were re-nerfed back to the old damage in a "hotfix".

This is exactly what is annoying to me.

Even with that hotfix most people "didn't get the memo". Why? Because they got away as soon as another annoying (or nerf let's be real) modification was added. For some people it was years ago. For other it's now.

The damage was done and the hotfix didn't changed people opinion on the last patch.

I wish it was more fun to play this game as Kharras.
I wish Silence wasn't removed (official reason : because some people cheated with sound)
I wish... i Wish...